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Tribes book tour takes flight

It’s been an exciting couple months since the release of my book, The Tribes of Burning Man, with launch parties and forums transitioning into bookstore readings around the Bay Area. Those will continue throughout the year, but tomorrow I open a new chapter and revisit and old one when I board a plane bound for New Orleans.

I’m not too sure what to expect from my pair of bookstore readings there – 4/20 at 6 pm at Maple Street Books and 4/23 at 1 pm at Garden District Book Store – but I’m really excited to meet some of the Big Easy Burners and tour that fantastic city, which plays an important role in the book’s six-year narrative.

It was after Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast on the first day of Burning Man 2005 that the culture developed its do-gooder outreach branch, Burners Without Borders, which grew out of an encampment of burners that spent nine months doing free cleanup work in Biloxi, Pearlington, and the surrounding communities.

I spent some time working with and chronicling that effort for this article in the Bay Guardian, material I later adapted into my book. So I’m excited to return and I think it’s appropriate that I launch the next phase of my book promotional efforts there, a place focused on seeds and deeds more than beads, but which also knows how to have a good time.

After that, I’ll be headed to New York City from June 6-12 for a couple readings, a June 7 NYC launch party for the book, the Figment festival, and a ceremony on June 12 where Rev. Billy and the Church of Life After Shopping will canonize me at St. Scribe, joining a pantheon of other notable figures, a truly humbling honor. Details coming soon.

And then, on the weekend of July 17, I’ll be returning to the city on my birth, San Luis Obispo, for a rocking Central Coast book launch party and reading. I hear the SLO burners have really been rocking it these last couple years and I can’t wait to connect with them. We’re also still trying to do events in Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and Austin this year, so stay tuned for those announcements as well.